PERSPECTIVES

Simon Sammons

Global Offering Lead – Finance and Accounting

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You may know Simon Sammons as Global Offering Lead – Business Process Services, but he’s also serving as Finance and Accounting (F&A) Offering Lead, so we thought we’d try to get to the heart of the F&A business process services business. So here goes:

Simon, where’s F&A really headed in the next five years and why should the world believe Accenture has a handle on it?

Let me start with the second part because that’s a bit easier: We created F&A BPO in 1991 with our first contract for BP, and we’ve been the tip of the spear for every subsequent generation. Think about the brainpower of the more than 30,000 very driven people we’ve got working on it. Combine that with the power of our technology and the work we are delivering to our more than 180 clients. Consider the experience we’ve gained through those deployments—we apply that experience to improve our offering and innovate. We never stop innovating to help our clients meet their challenges, and we never will.

What about the future?

Well, with the kind of momentum we discussed in the preceding question, how can one be anything but optimistic? But to be more specific, we at Accenture are using robotic process automation, artificial intelligence and predictive and prescriptive analytics to help clients achieve the innovation, revenue growth and cost reduction they are after. We have a culture of innovation that’s enabled by intelligent technology. This means we can provide a continuous stream of fresh ideas that range from small tweaks to big, bold, disruptive ideas that can pivot an industry.

But what have you done lately?

Fair question. We saved a global high-tech company $10 million in one year by securing early payment discounts. Our team and solutions increased pay-on-time performance from 53 percent to 82 percent for a global oil & gas company. In retailing, our team reduced invoice lifecycle time by more than 75 percent for a European company. And for another global tech company we achieved a 99.99 percent payment accuracy rate.